More gardening...

Another picture, from last summer, since I can't seem to access any of my new ones.

This is an active time of year (thank goodness it will get too hot soon to do all this work outside!) and we've been busy.

 We're preparing a new rose and lilac bed, and we've had to remove so many rocks that we were able to make a fence for it.  We bought "dirt" to put in this bed (since once we removed the rocks there was little left) and it turns out to be composted manure.  I'll need to mix it with regular dirt, so we need to spend more money and wait in order to finish this job.  Eventually I'll plant seven rose bushes which will hang down over the retaining wall, and four lilacs in the back row, doing their thing in early spring and hopefully providing me with some early bouquets.

  The vegetable garden is planted with close to 40 tomatoes (and Pio said he only wanted a handful this year!), lettuce, spinach, arugula, cucumbers, pumpkins, string beans, celery and...that's about it.  We may tuck a few other things into the rose bed as after all this year they'll be some space (zucchini maybe?, melons?)  Now if we can just keep the water flowing (sometimes my pump that's in the rainwater cisterns overheats) we'll be OK.   Over at the other house we have some potatoes in and we'll use these mostly to make gnocchi ,which we'll freeze and eat throughout the year (did you know that Thursdays are gnocchi day over here?  Yup, all the fresh pasta places have them on Thursdays).

We also planted 17 star jasmines, aka Confederate Jasmine (Gelsomino here) earlier this week which will climb up and cover a stone cliff we have in the back yard.  We planted one every 10 feet, so they should join together and really be nice rather quickly.  They're covered with fragrant little star-shaped flowers for months every year, stay green even in the winter, and don't require much water.  Can't ask for more than that!!

Up on that same retaining wall we have some fruit trees and planted a new lemon to replace one that died in the big freeze they had this past winter here (the orange and tangerines survived).  Rather than two lemon trees (there had been two), we put in a pomegranate also.  I love pomegranates!

Today we had three seminarians (student priests) from Rome over for lunch.  They were coming to town for a Confirmation and a meeting with the local priest, all in the afternoon, so they came early and joined us for lunch.  Pio knows them from when he drove them around to bless all  the houses for Easter.  It was a chance to show off the casareccia food we eat here... gnocchi, sauce, lamb, wine, salad, cookies, all homemade (not all in my home however!).  It was delcious, I must say.  The sheep came through to mow the lawn while they were here, and one (priest, not sheep) had a great time playing ping pong on xbox live kinnect with Dante.  They're really young (21, 22, 28), two from the USA and one from Mexico.  Nice fellows.

Gardening in my Italian yard...

My absolute favorite flowers in my garden here in Italy (and I do grow quite a few!) are these three beauties, taken last summer.  I love the blue of traditional morning glories, the boldness of the sunflowers (I grow tall and short, yellow and burgundy, multi-flowered and one huge flower above a giant stem...I love 'em all) and roses.  Roses do particularly well here in Italy, they must like the soil or something.  This year I have black spot on some of them--I guess it's been wetter than usual, but the flowers are beautiful just the same.  If I had my camera/ computer connection working, I'd show you the bouquet I picked yesterday...red, pink and white roses!  Such an elegant sight, really, the combination works so well.  My other fav, not pictured here (now where is last year's picture?) are portulacas.  I love portulacas!  They grow with almost no water (they are succulents after all) and have the prettiest little miniature rose-like  flowers in the most beautiful colors...if I can  get my camera/computer connection working, I'll definitely make a post! 

Flowers and showers...

I was all set to do a post, with pictures, of all the signs of spring's approach I've seen--the apricot and peach trees in bloom, the grape hyacinths popping up on the hills, even the wild asparagus that we've collected for our frittata.  Oh, and I can't forget to mention the spanish lavender which is an early bloomer too..but alas, the March rains have returned and it promises to be wet all week (at least it's not snow!).  If the sun peaks out later I'll take some pics, my camera is at the ready.   Have a good "last week of winter" everyone!

Early June flower pictures...

I've seen some beautiful cactus blooms this spring, have a new geranium with burgundy/green leaves and tiny orange flowers (what was mother nature thinking?) and my favorite blue of all time--the morning glory --is beginning to circle the orto fence.

Yes, that's Tuscan Kale...

surrounded by some pansies. Usually I enjoy Tuscan Kale on my dinner plate and pansies in the spring, but I was inspired by two, yes TWO different gardening magazine articles I saw this month where Tuscan Kale was featured as an ornamental. OK, I wasn't about to dig out a 4' x 6' bed (especially after being sick all week with the flu!), so I settled for this. I dug the kale out of the garden (hope it takes!) and bought about six white pansies (small flower type) to plant around the edge. I like it. It was nice to finally get out into some of this sunny, 70F weather we've been having.

I've got to start thinking about Turkey Day. We'll celebrate it with some neighbors and relatives coming over a couple of days later (no one could make it Thursday, including me, as I have to work). Still need to order the turkey (and NO, I don't want a 40 pounder like last time!!!) and see if I can find sweet potatoes without going into Rome...but I've got the apple and pumpkin pie recipes dusted off and ready to go this time next week. We'll probably have some Tuscan Kale too, mashed potatoes, corn...umm, I'm getting hungry!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!!

Of Cactus and London and this 'n that...

Haven't written here in ages, but people are still visiting (and even linking to me--thanks!) so I guess I'd better start writing again!

With the spring life has gotten very busy. We've been having work done to finish up the outside...brick and stone work on the front of the house, a cement driveway (and it's a long one), finishing up/off the upstairs... and because we use people who have other jobs, that work gets done almost exclusively on Saturdays only...so it's been a long drawn out process and is still not finished.

Gardening fever has also struck and I've got supina (hanging) petunias in my long front flower box (aout ten plants) and tons of perenial daisies along the wall of our upper driveway (OK, 30 plants total!) and we planted 44, yes 44 cyprus trees! They're babies, only about 18 inches tall, but one day, watch out Tuscany! We have two vegetable gardings going too, full of lettuce, eggplants, tomatoes, peas, beans, potatoes and herbs. I want to put in some brussel sprouts and black-leaf dinosaur kale too, but I think we'll wait until July so they can grow in the cooler fall months. Oh, and my cactus had three blooms at the same time! It's only about a foot tall, but it sits above a retaining wall that I have at the upper entrance to my driveway. Another cactus nearby promises to be a blooming spectacle soon (note all the buds!).

I'm still working three full days a week, and my students are busy preparing for a Cambridge Business English exam in early June. It's not easy and they are working hard (though many of them would prefer to forget the exam and just have conversation!). I'm working hard to keep all the photocopies organized, practice tests scored and remembering which class is which!

The menagerie here slowly grows, with our platy tank having two new members (2 sunset plattys) which brings the number in that tank to 10 fish, which includes two babies who have survived. We have another pregnant female (a mickey mouse platty) and hope at least one of her babies will survive too (they seem to be irrisistible snacks when tiny, even to their mom!).

At Easter we went to London and had a grand ole' time. Absolutely loved it. Dante was a little low-energy for the first couple of days as he initially didn't sleep well in the hotel, but once he got into the swing of things, he loved it too. My favorite thing (aside from finally meeting Big Ben in person) was Lion King in the theatre ("on Broadway" I would say if this were in NY, so what do I say when I see a show in London?). The theatre was beautiful, we laughed, ate ice cream in our seats during intermission, went to the martini bar across the street afterwards (and had typical roast beef with yorkshire pudding next door beforehand) and shopped in Coventry Gardens both before and after. Reminded me of the States in some ways, only waaaaaay closer. Yea! (See pictures on facebook.)

Got to run. I'm in an organizing, cleaning, moving furniture around mood (yes, Pio, things have changed a little in the week you've been in NY). I want to accomplish a lot today as tomorrow it will be back to working on the gardens, then Tuesday back to work. Whew! Have a good one, and thanks for reading, Diane

Mid-Winter Harvest

The sun was shining (finally), so I went out into the garden to see what I could find. Aside from the usual lettuce, I picked a large handful of chicory (which was quite bitter but good boiled, then sauted with garlic and olive oil), a bunch of radicchio (made into a radicchio lasagna), some herbs (which I'm drying) and some cabbage roses (for a winter boquet). Not bad for a mid-winter harvest.

Lavender, lavender...

Have I mentioned I went a little lavender crazy this spring? I planted 42...yes 42...plants. Maybe I was just so happy I could grow them here. Maybe it's because I ordered a dozen from my local plant guy, bought them when I found them elsewhere, then felt commited to buying the ones I ordered too! (well, that accounts for 24 of them anyway!)And they smell so good.

So anyway, any ideas about what to do with all this lavender? Searching around the web I found so many sites which had lavender recipes. I had heard of lavender ice cream...but wow, I had no idea there were so many recipes in which I could use these beautiful, organic, lavender flowers! If I make something I'll let you know how it turns out.

Have you ever cooked with and/or eaten lavender or any other flower, for that matter?

SERPENTE!

So, we had a snake--garden variety?--hanging out near the rear foundation of the house this weekend. A few older Italians suggested we kill it, but why? He was outside, after all, and if he can't live in peace there, where can s/he? Maybe it will keep the mice away until we get a cat. (Our neighbor has a kitten all ready for us when we get back from NY in mid-July. ) This one was about 3 feet (a meter) in length and a little thicker than my thumb.

Peonies in bloom!

This post is a little late, but I hadn't revived the blog yet when we actually did this, last month, and I love the photos!

Dante was off from school on Friday, April 25th (Liberation Day to celebrate the end of WWII in Italy, 1945) so we were looking for something to do. I'd been getting occasional emails from a garden park urging people to visit as they were only open to the public in April and May.

We decided to take advantage of the nice weather and Dante's day off (therefore we wouldn't have to hurry to get home by 1 p.m.to pick him up from school) to go to Centro Botanico Moutan outside Viterbo. Viterbo is to the north of Rome, and we're to the south, so it wasn't exactly around the corner...but it was worth it!

The Centro Botanico Moutan is the most important and largest Chinese Peony collection in all the world--and it's privately owned. One well-to-do peony fanatic started it in the late 1980's. It's peony heaven! Unfortunately you're not allowed to wander around just admiring (people were breaking off flowers and pulling plants up by the roots we were told) so you must wait for a small group to gather so that you can take a tour. The tour doesn't take that long, maybe a half hour or so, then there's time to shop at the store which sells peony spa products or the peony plant shed, which is where the tours begin and end.

As much as I was tempted, I didn't buy any, as our garden beds weren't ready and I also thought it would suffer in the hot car while we went to eat lunch and drove home. But I will buy a bare root plant through mail order (yes, mail order in Italy!) which I'll plant this winter. Now to decide which one. I have to say...they were all beautiful! (If you live in Italy, click on the Centro Botanico hyperlink above and request a catalog. Prepare to be wowed.)

A great year for roses!

So, I should be taking a driving lesson, or at least weeding a new patch of garden, but instead I'm thinking about how beautiful the roses are this year. Not just mine, but everyone's. In New York I always dealt with aphids and black spot, but here I've done nothing and look how beautful my little rose bush is! I'm thinking of going around with my camera (driving my automatic car and NOT the stick shift which I should be practicing on) and taking pictures of all the roses. Most of them have been in the ground for years, so they're gigantic and covered with color: pink, white, red, yellow. It's a great year for roses here in central Italy!

Gardens, continued

I did mention we've been busy in the gardens...and this weekend is the big festa in our town (fireworks and everything), including a market which will have lots of plants for sale. Can't wait! I need hanging geraniums for the boxes on the terrace and D. wants plants for his own little garden he started this week.

Over the last two weeks we've planted 40 lavender plants (think I need to learn to make soap or at least sachets!), a cactus garden (out by the front gate, far from the water hose) and agrumi--which means citrus: mandarins, clementines, lemons. Also snuck a peach in and still want an apricot and pomegranate.

This morning on our walk a lady gave me 25 tiny baby seedlings. Each one promises to grown into a small round green bush that will turn red in the autumn, then self-seed before dying with the winter. No one seems to the know the name. I have the little ones each in their own "bassinet" (flowerpot) and all together in the "baby carriage" (wheel barrow) so I can move them around with the shade now that they're kind of wilty looking. They like the shade anyway, and I'll eventually plant them in the flower box they are building out by my front door, this weekend, maybe!

Time to revive this blog!

I've decided that WAAAAAAAY too much time has gone by since my last post! I was busy (ahem). Last summer we spent about 8 weeks in NY. I initially thought we'd need all that time to change Real Estate agents or find renters for our house in Suffolk County, but on our third day there we got a solid offer so we really could have come back sooner, but didn't want to spend the money to change the tickets!

In the fall I attended a CELTA training course to get updated on all the new methods and materials for teaching English as a foreign language. That course was two days a week in Rome. Aside from leaving my house at 6:15 a.m. in order to arrive on time, it was a great experience. Now I just need a job! I'm looking now to line up something for September/October, part-time, two or three days a week.

My friend G. has been helping me a lot to get my gardens in shape around the house. I have wildflowers and weeds galore! Little by little we are taming the beds nearest to the house.

Last week one of my cactus' bloomed! It was a spectacular sight. G. says if I plant it in the ground it will get quite big, so we did. In fact with plants she donated from her own garden we planted a section out by my front gate(and far from my water hose) of plants that like it dry and hot! Little by little...

The haricot verts are in!

(That's skinny string beans to most of us...) My in-laws gave me a bagful from their garden yesterday, enough for two meals at least. Today I made half the Italian way--boiling them for a while, then sauteing them in olive oil and adding salt. And because I really didn't have enough sauce already made for lunch today (Pio told me we were going out to eat, then the gate guy came to work on the lower gate, and at the last minute, that was the end of that) I added the sauteed string beans to the rigatoni and not quite enough sauce I had...along with some more oil and pasta water and lots of grated parmesean...delish!

Oh, and Dante and I are excited! After much deliberation, it's decided that we will travel to NY this summer and we got tickets on the same flight as Paul and Sebastian. I'm trying to enroll Dante in golf camp with cousin Brett in Pennsylvania, then soccer camp with nephew Sebastian. I'm also looking for a reasonably priced computer camp...Dante's current obsession! We'll both get our annual physicals where we'll understand exactly what the Doctor is saying (and he won't ask us if we sweated recently, I'd be willing to bet!) and I'll visit my knitting teacher to review exactly how to knit those socks on two round needles???Pio will stay in Italy, with perhaps a short trip to Lourdes, taking care of the house, dogs and Mom and Dad.